Counter in cookie not working..

[Anon]

Hi, in a nutshell, I'm having trouble getting setcookie() to increment a value. What I'm trying to do is make it so that the advertising popup ( I know, they're evil ) on my site only pops up 5 times every 12 hours. Here's the code I'm using...

<?

$lifetime = time() + 3600 * 12;
if( !isset( $count )){
setcookie( "gotroms", $count = 0, $lifetime, "/" );
$popup = "<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=\"JavaScript\" src=\"http://www.xxxxxxxx.com/\"></script>";

} else if( $count < 5 ){

$count++;
setcookie( "gotroms", $count, $lifetime, "/" );
$popup = "<SCRIPT LANGUAGE=\"JavaScript\" src=\"http://www.xxxxxxxxxxx.com/\"></script>";

}else{

$popup = "";

}
?>

I'm not a very experienced coder, but I can't find anything that doesn't look right. If anyone could point me in the right direction I'd be very greatful.

Justin

[Anon]

Justin,

Seems like you're using setcookie a bit wrong.

The allmighty manual says:
int setcookie (string name [, string value [, int expire [, string path [, string domain [, int secure]]]]])

That means that you should set the cookie somewhat like this:
setcookie("count", "1",... );
That way the cookie value will show up as $count in the scripts, and even better HTTP_COOKIE_VARS["count"] (if my memory serves) which you should use to avoid hackers using for example a query string to simulate cookie value.

The way you're doing it now, is you're setting the cookie name to "gotroms", and you're giving it a string value as "$counter = 0", which means you'd have to run the value of the cookie name gotroms via the eval function to evaluate the PHP code in it. THIS IS VERY DANGEROUS because I can hack into the cookie and put any PHP code into it and that code will be executed on the server...

Hope this helps.. :-)

/Jocke

PS, popups are evil, ads are evil
PPS, just had to make that clear ;-)

[Anon]

So the "name" is actually the name of a variable..? Apparently. Anyway, thanks a bunch, figured it out.

Justin